Building Gingerbread Houses

Grandma Scott bought two gingerbread house building kits and so we built them as family home evening on December 15th. I typically like to do these kind of things on Saturdays so we don't have time constraints such as bedtime, but this is what worked for Karen and our Saturdays were a little booked as well.

Here are pictures from the just over an hour event (which ended with Eric yelling at the big girls for not obeying when he said they were done - they still had things to add to their house, but he had called time and wanted everyone in the living room - thus the yelling).

Assembling the four little houses;
trying to get the icing to hold.

Walls and roof now attached,
decorating commences.

Putting together their "pre-fabed" houses
& doing a good job of sharing icing
& candy pieces in their decorating efforts.

Xela and Ro started out being attentive
to detail, trying to make everything pretty.
Then it turned into just throw
on as much candy as they could.

Maybe because of the "hurry-up-its-time-for-bed" mode we were in at the end of the activity, but I didn't get a finished product picture and now, on December 26, there has been some massive destruction of the houses. Next year, we'll hopefully remember this year, and not try to squeeze a multiple hour, family bonding activity into an hour before bed time with the literal exclamation point at the end. Maybe next year, we'll have more candy leftovers from Halloween (the Bash did not produce excess candy, which isn't all bad) so I'll be more motivated to bake the gingerbread and promote the activity instead of voicing my intent to cancel it this year. :)